53
Hope
Once you’ve heard someone’s Song, it is difficult not to love them.
—From The Book of the Traveler
Cade looked down at his hands. They were now solid diamond and useless. The others stayed silent, too shocked to speak.
He moved his arms up and down. It felt strange to him, because he could still feel his hands. Coda masters he had trained with taught him about this. Once overencoded, a limb would feel as if it was still there, like a ghost. The sensation, he was told, never quite went away.
But the Acolyte…he could do it at will, he thought.
He tried opening and closing one of them, but it felt like it was trapped in hardened cement. He turned his hands over, trying to see if anything had changed. He looked at them, thoughtful.
Ashlyn walked up to him, expression somber, an
